Pleasure (33 page)

“You were amazing,” Guin said on quick, escalating breaths.

“So were you.” She laughed against his mouth. Guin kissed her again and again, her head held between his hands and her body pressed between his and the door of the small meeting room. “And I should have known.”

“I don't know what you mean.” He chuckled.

“The Senate. I should have known you'd want to do me in the Senate.”

“I want to do you everywhere and every way I can possibly think up. And when I'm done thinking up stuff on my own, I'm going to read lots and lots of books.”

“You don't like to read.” She laughed.

“For this I will make an exception. Although I will start with ones that have pictures first. Just to make it easier, of course.”

“Of course.”

There was a sharp rap at the door that vibrated through Malaya and made her go still for a moment beneath his mouth.

“We're going to ignore that, right?” Guin asked.

“Mm-hmm,” she agreed, smiling as she kissed him to prove it.

The knock came harder the second time, the sensation annoying to the lovers, who preferred to concentrate on other things. Guin growled in his irritation.

“Welcome to my world.” Malaya giggled. “Wait and see. It's much different being my guard as opposed to regent. You realize they are actually going to assign someone to guard you now, don't you?”

Guin pulled her away from the door, moving her aside as he grabbed for the knob.

“Over my dead body,” he groused as he jerked the door open. “I am perfectly capable of taking care of—”

The draw and plunge of the dagger into his chest was so fast that he barely reacted in time to draw up a fist, stopping the blade from sinking all the way to the hilt as he spoiled the attacker's full thrust into him by the width of his closed hand.

Still, half of an eight-inch dagger was enough to do serious damage, and considering how true the aim had been for his heart, Guin fell back in shock and hit the floor hard. Lodged in bone and heart muscle, the blade came with him, protruding from him as he stared at it for a stunned moment. He realized that he could actually see the beat of his heart vibrating up the blade and hilt.

Malaya screamed so loudly that it drew everyone within reach. The guards had already tackled the attacker and were holding her down on the floor as Malaya fell to her knees by Guin's body.

“
Drenna
save us! Guin!” she cried out, the terror and heartache filling her voice and her horrified eyes, making him reach to grab hold of her any way he could manage. But she was on his left and his coordination was deteriorating as he lost feeling in that arm. “Oh, Guin,” she sobbed, leaning over
him and, for a moment, unable to figure out where to touch him. “Somebody help him!” she screamed.

“Too late! Now you'll see what power the Senate can really have over you!” Angelique grunted out from beneath the weight of the guards holding her. “Did you really think we would let this abomination take place?”

Malaya turned through her tears as an overwhelming rage possessed her.

“Give me a blade!
Give me a blade!”
she screeched as she scrabbled over the floor toward the prone Senator. She rammed through the guards, fighting off the hands trying to stay her as she lunged for Angelique's throat. “Give me a blade or I'll flay her with my bare nails! Give me a blade!”

It was Killian who kneeled across from her and offered her a dagger over the body of her enemy.

“K'yatsume
, I am ever at your service,” he said softly. “But realize that while you spend time doing what others can do for you, you are wasting what may be very, very precious time with your mate.”

Malaya already had her hand on the weapon when Killian's observation penetrated her fury and struck its mark in her heart. She pulled her hand back and covered her mouth as tears poured down her cheeks. She whirled back toward Guin and crawled quickly back to his side.

By this time he was starting to gasp for breath, his coloring shading with tones of blue. They fumbled together to clasp hands and Malaya held the joined weaving of their fingers tightly to her breast.

“Guin,” she said, struggling to control her emotions. “My Guin. It's all right. It's going to be all right.”

“I told you…” he gasped, “they wouldn't…like it.”

“And I told you I don't care. I'll never care. I love you. That's all that matters.” She turned when Tristan slammed into the doorway, starting to call her name but stopping when he saw her on her knees next to her dying bodyguard. “Tristan! Please! We need healers. Please.”

“They've already called for them,
K'yatsume
,” Killian informed them. “They'll be here soon.”

“How in Light did this happen?” Tristan demanded of the guards around him.

“She said she needed to apologize for…” The guard stopped when he saw
M'itisume'
s furious eyes. “We always…Guin was with
K'yatsume.”

Tristan understood what that meant. It meant they were so used to Guin protecting Malaya so well that they had not even considered she might be in any danger. They hadn't taken Guin's safety into account at all. And why would they? Guin had been a force of impenetrable protection for decades.

Tristan watched his twin sister bending over the prone body of her lover, her tears falling onto him as she tried to speak words of comfort to him. His heart twisted and lurched in sympathetic pain for her. He knew how much she felt for Guin. He was keenly aware of it enough to have even felt a twinge of jealousy when she had told him she was going to marry him. Whether he was jealous of her or jealous of Guin he hadn't had time to figure out. It had been a petty emotion and not worthy of their relationship, so he had discarded it and wished her well while promising his complete support. He had known Guin would take the best of care with her and that no one would love her better.

Now he was watching their hard-won union crumble because of twisted elitist prejudice. Guin had known they would reject him, but none of them could have anticipated something like this. Certainly not this quickly. But taking notes from Julius Caesar, Angelique had done the deed swiftly and publicly, not by skulking around with assassins and plots. As if that would give the message a more powerful punch.

Except that had been a conspiracy of many and, so far, all they could see here was a criminal acting on her own bigotry. Malaya had infuriated the Senator several times over, first by banishing her known lover from the Senate in public humiliation, then by slapping her down repeatedly in front
of her peers. It had also been made very clear how Angelique had felt about Guin's placement among the royals.

Very clear, indeed.

“Oh my gods, I beg you with all that I am to save this man. Please,
Drenna
, do not take him from me now. Don't punish me,
M'gnone,
for the vanity and self-centeredness that made me waste his precious love for me. I beg you—” Malaya sobbed in a way that Tristan felt all the way to his everlasting soul. “Please.
Oh, please
…”

“Don't…my honey…” Guin managed in staccato bursts of breath. “These days…were…worth everything…to me.”

“I love you and I know you love me,” she said as she bent to kiss his forehead again and again. Like a mantra, she kept repeating the words. “I love you and I know you love me.”

“And your gods love you very much,
K'yatsume.”

Malaya turned her face to the door and her body rippled with the stiffening of surprise.

“M'jan
Sagan,” she breathed.

The priest was rushing with breath, having run every step from Sanctuary when he had heard of the tragedy unfolding in the Senate.

“It's just
Ajai
Sagan, now,” he corrected her gently as he moved into the room. “I'm no longer a priest. And here is my reason why.”

From behind his back he drew forward a pale, prettyish little redheaded woman with Caribbean blue eyes that were wide with everything she was seeing around her.

Sagan had disappeared, had been presumed dead, after the battle with Nicoya for control of Sanctuary. The priest known for his solitary ways and his fierce love of discipline had been one of the best penance priests in Sanctuary's history. He could dole out penance and ultimate punishment with dark efficiency and had remained ever faithful to his gods and the Shadowdweller people he protected from sin.

But history had made them leery of thinking Sagan was dead because his body had never been found. Everyone who recalled how they had once mistaken Trace to be dead, only to have him end up Acadian's toy for so long, realized that it was a hard possibility the as-yet-unidentified creature had him in her dungeons.

Now Malaya recalled Magnus coming to them and telling them about this girl. This
human
girl. He had reported Sagan's story of how Acadian's men had kidnapped him after Nicoya had gotten through poisoning him and, on their way to wherever Acadian had instructed them to bring him, they had stopped at a cabin owned by this human girl, threatening her into defending herself with…

Magic. She was a Witch. A natural born Witch.

But to the Shadowdwellers and all other Nightwalkers, magic was one of the darkest and foulest forces on the planet. Necromancers, human magic-users as they were usually called, delighted in using the black, poisonous magic against the Nightwalker breeds to capture them, attempt to rob them of power, or simply to torture and kill them for their amusement.

And they dared to label Nightwalkers evil.

Yet Sagan would have them believe this human woman, this natural Witch, was somehow different; that she had found a way to withdraw from the evil of magic and instead use spells and power in ways that wouldn't stain her soul.

When
M'jan
Magnus had relayed this news, Tristan and Malaya had been skeptical at best. Their experiences with magic-users had never ended well; every human who touched the art reeked of foul dissonance. The stain on their souls emanated an odor that warned of who and what they were to the sensitive senses of the races who wanted nothing more than to keep far away from them.

So when Malaya saw Sagan bring the redhead closer, her reaction was to bend protectively over the body of her dying mate. She had never met this girl, had no idea who or what
she was, but she didn't want her anywhere near Guin. Too much had happened to him at the hands of twisted women already.

“Sagan, now is not the time for this! Take her away from me,” she commanded.

“
K'yatsume
, Valera won't hurt any of us. I brought her to you so she could help you.”

“No. Keep her away.”

Just then Magnus entered, slipping past everyone to kneel next to his devoted religious student and lay a hand on her back. The touch broke her apart, making her weep as Guin's breaths began to hitch slower and slower.

“M'jan,”
she wept,
“Drenna
is taking him to the Beyond. I don't mean to be selfish, but I want him here with me! I need him so much,
M'jan.
”

“I know you do. I believe
Drenna
knows this as well,
K'yatsume
. I have only just met Valera, Malaya, but I can see a good soul within her. I smell no stain of malevolence on her. She swears she can help, and I believe her. But—”

“But only if he's alive,” the redhead blurted out, daring to drop to her knee on Malaya's left. “If he dies, the magic won't work. Please, I want to help. You have to look at him and realize what your choices are, K'…” She floundered and Sagan whispered a soft prompt.
“K'yatsume
. If we do nothing, he will die within minutes…less, even. What harm is it you think I can do that's worse than that?”

“You can stain him so the gods will not want to carry him safely to the afterlife! I would rather he die!”

Valera sat back on her heels, biting her lip anxiously as she looked to Sagan for guidance. The young human woman had only her experiences with Sagan, the man she had come to deeply love, to draw on. She needed to prove herself, but had to do it carefully. Some of the more aggressive magic made her emanate a strong blue light. A light that would burn and destroy the Shadowdwellers around her.

Suddenly she reached out and grabbed the four inches of
exposed blade of the dagger in Guin's chest. She squeezed until it cut her hand—just in time, because Malaya reached out and backhanded her across the face.

“Don't you dare touch him!” she screeched as she loomed over the fallen girl.

“K'yatsume!”
Sagan reprimanded her, kneeling to help the woman he'd brought to her with good intentions.